The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (142 page)

The older Churchill children were in boarding school now, with only Mary at home, but Chartwell was never lonely. As a host he was as affable as ever. Convoys of friends arrived, some as early as Thursday, for long weekends. He greeted them eagerly and was genuinely sorry to see them leave. One guest wrote in his diary: “He was in a marvellous mood and just would not let us go. I played the piano and we talked on cricket, on music and politics.” The toys of war still fascinated him. James Lees-Milne, a friend of young Randolph’s, told Martin Gilbert of one evening when “we remained at that round table till after midnight. The table cloth had long ago been removed. Mr. Churchill spent a blissful two hours demonstrating with decanters and wine glasses how the Battle of Jutland was fought…. He got all worked up like a schoolboy, making barking noises in imitation of gunfire and blowing cigar smoke across the battle scene in imitation of gun smoke.”
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His closest friend was still Birkenhead—F.E.—with the Prof a close second. He and Beaverbrook became somewhat less intimate. The publisher wanted Winston filmed by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which was gathering a celluloid history of the period using what he called “the new process of talking pictures.” The cameramen had already shot reels of Coolidge, Mussolini, and Poincaré. Churchill declined on the ground that “I am in a far humbler class than the individuals you mention, and have no right to such prominence.” This humility is suspicious, and, in fact, he had another motive. In 1928 Beaverbrook had asked permission to print the letter Winston had sent Bonar Law in 1915, begging Law not to dismiss him from the Admiralty. As one who often earned his living by quoting the correspondence of others, Churchill could hardly refuse, but his reply was curt: “You make me tear open old wounds and their sting returns. Certainly publish the letter as you propose, not as a thing thrust into publicity by me but on your own responsibility.”
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In addition, the flag of Free Trade was under fire again, and Beaverbrook was sponsoring the United Empire League, a lobby for tariffs. Now in 1929 the Conservatives had been in office for five years; Baldwin had to call for a general election. United Empire candidates were running well in by-elections. Free Trade had lost its great popularity, and the prime minister committed himself to tariff reform. It was the first of several issues which were to estrange Baldwin and Churchill. England’s political climate had changed, and once again, as in 1915 and 1922, Winston felt the chill of isolation gathering round, found that MPs of all parties were beginning to avoid him.

A
ny party in power tries to take the public’s pulse from time to time, and on September 2, 1928, Churchill had written the prime minister at Aix-les-Bains: “I cannot feel that there is any decisive drift agst us. But Labour will have a heavy class vote; & the Liberals will queer the pitch—(what else
can
they do?).” They could continue to join Labour in droves, and that is what they were doing. That winter the Tory sky darkened; of nine by-elections in what had been considered safe Conservative constituencies, Labour had won three and the Liberals two, and the four surviving Tories had narrowly escaped defeat. Party morale was deteriorating, the cabinet was apathetic, the number of jobless growing. Beaverbrook thought that “unemployment will be the one and only issue which counts.” Churchill, with whom he conferred, though their manner toward one another had become distant, disagreed with him, arguing that it was “confined to certain areas which will go against the Government anyhow.” Yet within a week Winston’s optimism had evaporated. He now despaired; the Conservatives were vulnerable on too many other issues. “He accepts electoral defeat in advance,” wrote Beaverbrook, though he added that “his judgement on such matters is worse than any prominent man I know.”
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In January, five months before the country went to the polls, Churchill told Baldwin that the voters should be warned that they faced a choice between socialism, which had been responsible for the general strike, and “modern” conservatism. The trend in all countries, he said, was toward cooperation between nations and a continuum of national policy; “women can feel these tide movements by instinct.” A graver, more delicate matter was dissension within the cabinet. Baldwin’s successor would be either Winston or Neville Chamberlain, minister of health, and several ministers shared Lord Derby’s view: “I believe in Winston’s capability if only he were a bit more steady. But you never know what kite he is going to fly next.” The first step for Chamberlain’s supporters was to get Churchill out of the Exchequer. Amery wrote the prime minister in March: “The essential thing is to move Winston…. In spite of all his brilliancy and verbal originality, he is entirely lacking in constructive thought and imagination…. He has been, in every direction, a paralysing negative influence, and the Party knows it and would breathe a profound sigh of relief if he were shifted.” The force behind the maneuvering was the man who stood to benefit from it. Chamberlain, who had suggested Winston’s appointment as chancellor, had resolved to evict the Churchills from No. 11. Baldwin, susceptible to pressure, contemplated appointing Churchill secretary of state for India, even though the viceroy thought Winston unsuitable because he was “out of sympathy” with Indian political aspirations and was even “rather disposed to despise” them. The prime minister made the offer anyway and Churchill flatly turned it down. Birkenhead was doing a good job at the India Office, he said, and he shared F.E.’s “deep misgivings about that vast sub-continent.” Nevertheless, determined to avoid friction with Chamberlain if possible, he wrote Baldwin that he wanted to “associate Neville” with major Treasury decisions. Neville declined. His objective hadn’t changed; he was turning to intrigue. Anticipating the possibility that the coming election might leave the Liberals holding the balance of power between the Tories and Labour, as in 1924, Churchill sounded out Lloyd George on his terms for a Conservative-Liberal alliance. This, Chamberlain told Baldwin, was disloyal. Baldwin disagreed, though he said that if the voting ended in a stalemate, he couldn’t possibly share responsibility with Lloyd George. Neville wrote in his diary: “S.B. said the King’s government must be carried on, but that he personally would not serve with L.G. I said I was in the same position; and S.B. said in that case he supposed the leadership would go to Winston.” Yet by spring it was obvious that Chamberlain had become Baldwin’s favorite minister. Churchill realized that making common cause with his Tory critics was impossible. He wrote Clementine: “I have made up my mind that if N. Ch. is made leader of the CP or anyone else of that kind, I clear out of politics & see if I cannot make you & the kittens a little more comfortable before I die. Only one goal still attracts me, & if that were barred I shd quit the dreary field for pastures new.”
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Polling was set for May 30. As a national figure Churchill was expected to stump for all Conservative candidates, but he faced a strong Liberal challenger in Epping, so while he was speaking elsewhere, Clementine took soundings among the voters there. “Darling,” she hastily scrawled, “I do hope you enjoy your Scotch Meetings—I wish I were coming with you. But I think it is wise for me to be here & start the ball rolling.” She rented an Epping cottage—“I think you will find this house a snug retreat,” she wrote him, “from which to sally forth on the constituency”—and, because there were no large halls in the town, ordered the erection of two huge tents in which Winston might address his constituents. Speaking in one of them he suggested that state insurance might be available, not just to wage earners, but to all Britons. It was his one positive note in an otherwise deplorable campaign. In Liverpool he denounced Ramsay MacDonald’s wartime pacifism: “I do not forget that, nor ought it to be forgotten.” The scientist Sir John Boyd-Orr had a surer sense of the country’s mood: “A ruling class living on dividends, masses of the people on the dole, and a Government trying to maintain an uneasy
status quo
is a picture which fills thinking people with despair.” Churchill meanwhile was calling for a vote of confidence in Baldwin’s “capable, sedate Government.” If MacDonald were returned to office, he predicted, Labour would “bring back the Russian Bolsheviks, who will immediately get busy in the mines and factories, as well as among the armed forces, planning another general strike.” On April 30, 1929, he addressed the nation by radio. Conservatives, he said, had given England peace abroad, stable government at home, honest administration, goodwill, public and private thrift, and relief from “the burden of galling rates.” He said: “Avoid chops and changes of policy; avoid thimble-riggers and three-card trick men; avoid all needless borrowing; and above all avoid, as you would the smallpox, class warfare and violent political strife.” The message wasn’t much, but the delivery was remarkable, and this time Beatrice Webb wasn’t the only one to remark on it. The next morning’s
Daily Express
commented on its effectiveness. Churchill’s performance, the editorial said, “knocked the six preceding broadcasts into a cocked hat… as an exhibition of polemical oratory it was superb. His voice was edged alternately with sarcasm and warning. There was a note in it of extraordinary intimacy with his audience. He began with statistics… and ended high on the pinnacle of perfervid patriotism.”
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It is singular how the brightest of politicians can convince themselves, against all evidence, that they are going to win. On May 28 Winston told his constituents: “Victory is in the air.” It wasn’t. Two evenings later he joined Baldwin at No. 10 to follow the returns. Thomas Jones recalls that at one desk “sat the PM with narrow slips of paper on which he inscribed the… lists as they arrived.” At another “sat Winston doing similar lists in red ink, sipping whisky and soda, getting redder and redder, rising and going out often to glare at the machine himself, hunching his shoulders, bowing his head like a bull about to charge. As Labour gain after Labour gain was announced, Winston became more and more flushed with anger, left his seat and confronted the machine in the passage; with his shoulders hunched he glared at the figures, tore the sheets and behaved as though if any more Labour gains came he would smash the whole apparatus. His ejaculations to the surrounding staff were quite unprintable.”
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By the following afternoon the final results were in: Labour, 288 seats; Conservatives, 260; Liberals, 59. Churchill himself had been reelected, but with only 48 percent of the vote. Among the losers were two of his young protégés, Macmillan and Alfred Duff Cooper. The Liberals once more held the balance of power. Churchill and Austen Chamberlain urged the prime minister to strike a bargain with Lloyd George. That was easy for them to say; they were old friends of George’s. But Baldwin, who had been the architect of George’s ruin in 1922, had decided that such an alliance was out of the question. After spending a weekend at Chequers thinking it over, he informed the cabinet he was going to resign. Ramsay MacDonald could take over again. All the Tory ministers then donned frock coats and boarded the Windsor train to hand the King their seals of office. Being a civil servant, Eddie Marsh could not continue as Churchill’s secretary; they parted tearfully. T. E. Lawrence wrote Eddie: “The General election means that Winston goes out, I suppose. For himself I’m glad. He’s a good fighter, and will do better out than in, and will come back in a stronger position than before. I want him to be PM somehow.” That view was not shared by the man now moving out of No. 10. According to Beaverbrook, Winston visited Baldwin in the prime minister’s House office—“the PM’s room”—and told him of a strong movement to oust William Henry Davison, the party manager. Davison, said Winston, had become a focus of unpopularity. “Baldwin told Churchill,” Beaverbrook wrote, “that there was nobody more unpopular than himself. The difficulty of carrying Churchill, said Baldwin, was one of the main reasons for losing the election.” If true, this was the first real break between the two men.
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Evicted from No. 11, the Churchills rented the London home of Venetia Montagu, Asquith’s old inamorata. Winston was planning a trip through Canada and the United States, to promote his books and line up editors and publishers for future writing assignments, and he left the details to Clementine. As a member of the Conservative Business Committee, or shadow cabinet, he expected to be an active Tory strategist and policymaker. “Do not hesitate to engage one or two extra servants,” he wrote her. “Now that we are in opposition we must gather colleagues & M.P.s together a little at lunch & dinner. Also I have now a few business people who are of importance. We ought to be able to have lunches of 8–10 often, & dinners of the same size about twice a week. You should have a staff equal to this.” But his assumption that he would be in the thick of things was unjustified. Baldwin had been right; many senior members of the party held him responsible for their defeat. This was revealed to him when Ramsay MacDonald had been in power less than a week. The new prime minister announced his intention to evacuate all British troops from Egypt except those in the canal zone. Winston objected vehemently, but “when I rose in my place on the Front Opposition Bench to interrogate the Government,” he wrote in a note long afterward, Baldwin “sat silent and disapproving. I immediately perceived that the… honoured leader did not think this was a good point to press. Murmurs and even cries of dissent from the Conservative benches were added to the hostile Government interruptions, and it was evident that I was almost alone in the House.”
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